The Louisiana Flood of 2016 is driving homeowners to buy federal flood insurance -- some for the first time -- after a steady, years-long decline in participation in the national program.

The National Flood Insurance Program in 2016 is on pace to top its 2012 high in Louisiana of roughly 483,000 active policies, said Wayne Berggren, an insurance crew leader with FEMA. The program is still waiting for its final tally from December.

A bulk of the increase came from 20,000 new policies in Ascension, East Baton Rouge and Livingston parishes, the epicenter of the August floods.

"People are just shopping for flood insurance because they've never had it before," Berggren said.

That uptick, however, won't lower policy owners' overall rates. Premiums are determined by the level of risk in a property's flood zone and any structure's base flood elevation, Berggren said. In other words, infrastructure -- levees, raised homes, higher ground -- is major factor in lowering insurance rates.

The flood insurance program's popularity has waned somewhat since 2012, dropping to 454,000 policies in 2015 -- a slide FEMA attributes to several successive, quiet hurricane seasons in the Gulf of Mexico.

In response to the August flooding, the program has received 29,000 damage claims and paid out more than $2.2 billion to policy holders, Berggren said. After homes and businesses in flood zones with low to moderate risk were inundated, surprising many homeowners, there has been renewed interest in the program.

The national program remains as much as $24 to $26 billion in arrears, stemming back to debts incurred during payouts from hurricanes Katrina and Rita 11 years ago and exacerbated by Superstorm Sandy and Hurricane Isaac in 2012.

New flood maps for New Orleans, which went into effect in September, dramatically reduced flood insurance rates by taking into account the city's levee system.

Thousands of properties were moved out of "special flood hazard areas," which make insurance policies mandatory.

This story was updated to correct the spelling of Wayne Berggren's name.